As I walked the central market, taking pictures, the man in white told me how wonderful his food was at his little stall restaurant. I had already eaten, and declined, but he kept looking at my camera, so I asked if he wanted a picture. He became all smiles and wanted a picture of not just himself, but with his friend.

I offered to send him the photograph, but he did not care to see it, he just liked the idea of his picture being taken.

As I stood on the corner of the street, pointing my camera down the alleyway, walking up was a grandmother, mother and daughter, and when they saw me they hustled out of the way. I smiled at them and with words and gestures, told them I would like for them to be in the picture. The mother and daughter smiled, threw their bags onto the bushes, and while the grandmother declined, they went and posed for me.

The center of Zacatecas was made a World Heritage Site about ten years ago, which means all renovation or rebuilding must keep the original facade and its original look, which is one of the reasons why this city is so beautiful.

Random Home.

My local burrito shop (across from Las Quince Letras), with wonderful 1920’s photographs of Zacatecas, 1930’s radios on the wall, and incongruously, a five by three foot poster from The Cure’s Disintegration album on the wall.

The tour bus, with the Central Cathedral and La Bufa hill in the background.

View the opposite direction from the picture above, down the main street.

Central Cathedral.

Fly to Zacatecas to fly to London.

Check in desk at the Hostel Villa Colonial, with Antonio on left, and Ernesto -the owner and instigator of Thursday all you can drink tequila nights.

2 Responses to “Random Zacatecas Photographs [Part 3]”

I love the shot of the burrito store. One of my favorite things about desert climates (Tucson is like this) is what I call “long light”. Somehow, and you’ve captured it here, light looks different when it has traveled through miles and miles of atmosphere. Only in the desert, can low, long light travel uninterrupted by cloud cover through 50, 60 miles of atmosphere. In the burrito shot, you have captured the “two different worlds” of light here. You see that? How the second floor is still in the long, low light, and the first floor is… it’s almost in a different time! That imbalance between the worlds of the top of the photo and the bottom creates a narrative tension. That kid on the bottom doesn’t even seem to know that there’s a whole different world right above him. Beautiful. A lot of photographers wouldn’t have taken that photo because of “the shadow” and you use a “deficit” to create some real tension here. I love it.

The Tour Bus shot has an amazing feel as well. It is amazing how stark the light can be in the desert. I think the lack of moisture in the air makes everything crisp. There are many levels to this shot. It gives that feeling of being in many places simultaneously that can really only happen in a photograph. If this were a moving shot, some element of the foreground or midground would draw attention through movement. But because it is a photograph, we have the “story” of the sky in the upper right, which is at odds with the light in the middle on the buildings… that stark desert light. And then there are all kinds of human stories in the foreground here. From commercial to personal sort of begging story. All those stories sharing that spot. Beautiful!